The Guantánamo Files: An Archive of Articles — Part Ten, July to September 2011

3.1.12

Please support my work!

For nearly six years, I have been researching and writing about Guantánamo and the 779 men (and boys) held there over the last ten years, first through my book The Guantánamo Files, and, since May 2007, as a full-time independent investigative journalist. For three years, I focused on the crimes of the Bush administration and, since January 2009, I have analysed the failures of the Obama administration to thoroughly repudiate those crimes and to hold anyone accountable for them, and, increasingly, on President Obama’s failure to charge or release prisoners, and to show any sign that Guantánamo will eventually be closed.

As the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo approaches, this is an intolerable situation, as the prison remains as much of an aberration, and a stain on America’s belief in itself as a nation ruled by laws, as it was when it was opened by George W. Bush on January 11, 2002. Closing the prison remains as important now as it did when I began this work in 2006.

Over the last six years of researching Guantánamo and writing about it on an almost daily basis, my intention has been to puncture the Bush administration’s propaganda about Guantánamo holding “the worst of the worst” by telling the prisoners’ stories and bringing them to life as human beings, rather than allowing them to remain as dehumanized scapegoats or bogeymen.

This has involved demonstrating that the majority of the prisoners were either innocent men, seized by the US military’s allies at a time when bounty payments were widespread, or recruits for the Taliban, who had been encouraged by supporters in their homelands to help the Taliban in a long-running inter-Muslim civil war (with the Northern Alliance), which began long before the 9/11 attacks and, for the most part, had nothing to do with al-Qaeda or international terrorism.

This list is the first of two covering my articles over the last six months, and, in the next article in this series, I’ll cover everything I wrote between October and December 2011, bringing the archive of all my articles up to date.

Throughout the three-month period covered by these articles, the main focus of my work was my ongoing analysis of the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks, which involved 17 parts of my 70-part, million-word series, entitled, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” in which I have been telling the prisoners’ stories, as revealed in the files, adding that to what was already known about the prisoners.

In particular, this project has involved me subjecting the US military’s allegations to a forensic analysis, in which I have established above all the alarming extent to which the supposed evidence actually consists of unreliable statements made by a handful of prisoners who are either well-known liars (because they were bribed with more favorable conditions, or they were coerced, or they had mental health problems) or were torture victims, held in secret CIA prisons, whose statements are therefore unreliable.

Thanks, Redjade and Ann — and everyone who has taken an interest in the archive. I appreciate the support. Next week — perhaps even on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantanamo — I’ll be publishing my 1500th blog post, so I guess it’s fair to say that I’ve been busy since I started blogging on a regular basis in May 2007. Please do bookmark the page for the archive if you need to reference my work — or if you’re just interested in seeing how the “war on terror” has played out over the last five years: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/category/a-chronological-list-of-guantanamo-articles/